


Pandemonium! Dimension of Horrors

by mimsyborogove



Series: Frightening Fall Fic Fest [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Haunted House, M/M, SHFallFic, Scareactor AU, Week 3: Eldritch Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-11-28 18:51:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20971361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimsyborogove/pseuds/mimsyborogove
Summary: Alec Lightwood can’t believe his friend Jace talked him into volunteering at New York’s newest haunted house,Pandemonium! Dimension of Horrors. But when Alec meets a cute guy there, he figures maybe it won’t be so bad.That is, until people start disappearing.





	Pandemonium! Dimension of Horrors

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Alec muttered under his breath, closing his eyes as Jace splattered fake blood on his face. “Just because you wanted to flirt with that girl from your art history class.”

“You still don’t look gory enough,” Jace said, ignoring Alec’s comments and squirting more blood into his hands, then reaching for Alec’s hair. 

“I wouldn’t do that,” a voice warned. Alec turned to see an incredibly good-looking man already covered in artful splashes of crimson, somehow making the gore look elegant. “That stuff is hell to wash out of your hair.”

Jace awkwardly rubbed the excess blood off on Alec’s shirt instead, leaving him covered in smeared handprints. 

The man winked a charcoal lined eye at Alec and disappeared out of the dressing tent, Alec assumed to the area in front of the haunted house, where the volunteer cast was supposed to meet to find out the rehearsal guidelines. 

“I’m sticky and I don’t like this,” Alec complained, tugging at his bloody shirt. The flyer had said to come in your best blood covered costume, but Alec just felt damp. His sister Isabelle had had the right idea refusing to come with them. Everything about this was going to be terrible.

“You look great,” Jace said, apparently deciding they were both saturated enough. “Very scary.”

Alec rolled his eyes as they made their way to the front of the house with the rest of the gathering crowd. 

“That looks like Clary,” Jace said, clapping Alec on the shoulder, further smearing the still-wet blood. “I’ll be right back.”

Alec rolled his eyes again. It would be a miracle if his eyeballs stayed in his head through the night, he thought mutinously. He’d seen Jace hit on girls before, but he’d never seen Jace with the kind of schoolboy crush that made him drag his best friend out to work in a cheesy haunted house because he overheard her talking about it.

“You’re a good friend to come with him,” the same voice as before said from behind him.

Alec spun around, and the man smiled the kind of smile that lit up his entire face and made Alec’s heart stutter in his chest. Up close, the man was even more handsome than Alec had first thought, the curve of his eyes lined with dark glitter and his black hair spiked straight up.

The man held out a hand covered in silver rings, the nails painted black. “Magnus,” he introduced himself.

“Alec,” Alec replied, shaking Magnus’s hand, trying not to think about how it felt in his. He was an adult, he knew how to shake hands. He did it all the time. Why did it suddenly feel like he didn’t remember how to grasp someone’s hand properly, or the appropriate amount of time to shake it for? His own palms weren’t sweaty, were they?

“Did you come alone?” Alec asked, trying to cover his internal panic as he let go of Magnus’s hand. Most of the scareactors were standing in little groups of the people they had come with, but there was no one else hovering around Magnus. 

“Alas,” Magnus sighed dramatically, then grinned again. “Two of my friends usually come with me, but Ragnor’s in London on a research trip, and Catarina’s manager has her working what I’m pretty sure is an illegal number of double shifts at the hospital to deal with flu season starting early this year.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Not this one specifically,” Magnus said. “But a few others. We actually tried a haunted corn maze instead of a house last year, but Ragnor complained the whole time that it made him sneeze, and a chainsaw wielding maniac is a lot less scary with hay fever. This haunt is new, so I thought we’d check it out, but then I was the only one available.”

A hush fell over the crowd as a woman stepped out of the house’s facade. She wore a slinky dress, and her lips were painted blood red.

”Welcome to _Pandemonium! Dimension of Horrors_,” she announced. “I’m Lilith, the owner. I’m thrilled to see so many of you here to help us make this the most frightening Halloween event in the country. Please be patient as my associates give you your placements.”

Several men and women Alec hadn’t noticed until just now walked through the crowd with clipboards, pausing to talk with each group for a moment before handing them a key. Jace made it back right before one of the staff got to their group, Clary and her friend Simon in tow. 

“You five together?” a tall woman asked, tapping the tip of her pen on the clipboard. 

“Yes,” Alec said before Magnus could say anything. 

Magnus gave him a grateful smile. His tone had been bright earlier, but he had seemed disappointed that his friends hadn’t been able to come with him this year.

Alec hoped the fake blood covered the flush in his cheeks. 

“Room twelve, the operating room,” the woman told them, passing Alec the key. “This opens up the backstage door for you to get in and out. Don’t walk through the other rooms and get in their way.”

The clipboard carrying workers vanished back into the house, and Lilith drew the crowd’s attention again.

“Remember, only full time staff is allowed in room thirteen,” Lilith called, loud enough for the assembled scareactors to hear. “Can’t have any of our secrets getting out,” she added with a coy twist of her too red lips. “You have one hour to figure out your sets, then we’ll do a run through.”

“This isn’t how haunts usually work,” Magnus murmured as they made their way to their assigned room. “Usually you audition and are given a part, not just told to turn up covered in gore and figure it out for yourself. And they’re usually more of a maze, not neatly laid out in individual rooms like this.”

They opened the door marked with a red _12_ to find a dingy, blood splattered operating room with two tables holding prosthetic body parts. Everyone turned to Magnus to take the lead since he was the only one of them who had done this before.

“We have five people and two distractions,” Magnus explained, gesturing to the tables. “That means an attacker and victim on each operating table, and one person to take advantage of the guests’ distraction to sneak up and scare them. Though we really should have two or three more people doing that with this much space.”

He shook his head and helped Clary figure out how to make it look like she was sawing off Simon’s leg, then turned to the other table.

”How do you feel about ripping out my spine?” he asked Alec. “Unless Blondie wants to play the screaming victim?”

”Nah, I’m good,” Jace said hastily, rummaging through the rest of the loose props for something to bang together and make noise.

“Don’t worry, your part is easy,” Magnus assured Alec with a wink. “You just have to look menacing while you murder me.”

He climbed into the hidden hole in the middle of the table, his torso flopped over one half, while the prosthetic legs on the other half made it look like he was laying down. Alec’s job was to pull the fake spine, so that it looked like he was actually ripping Magnus’s spine out of his body, while also stepping on a trigger that would spray the guests with water to make them feel like they were being sprayed with blood, all while Magnus screamed and thrashed and then fell limp, after which Jace would jump out of a boo hole, chasing the guests through the door to the next room. 

After an hour of practice, Lilith and the rest of the full time staff walked through to inspect everything. 

“Excellent job,” Lilith said, clapping her hands together. Her long nails were as red as her lips, filed to sharp points. “Do exactly this when we start the real thing tomorrow.”

Alec noticed that instead of going through to door to room thirteen, Lilith and the others left through the backstage door that opened into to the parking lot. He supposed it made sense if room thirteen didn’t have any volunteers who needed to practice. But something about it still made him feel uneasy.

——

_Pandemonium! Dimension of Horrors_ opened the next night, and Alec cursed Jace again for making him do this as they set up for the first set of guests. Alec’s stomach twisted with nerves, like he had eaten snakes for dinner instead of a sandwich.

Magnus gave him a reassuring smile from where he was already settled in his hole in the table. “Don’t be nervous. I’ll be right here with you the whole time.”

Alec flushed, but he felt a little better.

They didn’t have time to talk again once the house opened for guests, but they would catch each other’s eye and laugh between groups, especially when they had gotten a good scare. 

Alec hadn’t expected to enjoy himself volunteering in a cheesy haunted house, but he found himself having fun. And it was kind of nice, having his hand on Magnus’s shoulder all night—just to brace for the spine ripping, of course, but still. It was nice. 

He tried not to overthink it.

”Is anyone else starving,” Simon yawned at the end of the night, once the guests had left.

”Pizza?” Clary suggested. “If you rearrange your sound equipment, all of us should fit in your van.”

They all piled into Simon’s van, Magnus looking a little confused, but pleased to be included. He didn’t have a car in the parking lot, so he must have walked from the subway station like Alec and Jace had.

“Twitter is blowing up about the haunt,” Magnus said, scrolling through his phone as their pizza arrived. His shoulder brushed against Alec’s as he moved. The booth they were crammed into was a tight fit for the five of them. “No one can agree on what’s in the last room, only that it will make grown men wet themselves in terror.”

“That’s good, right?” Alec didn’t use Twitter, or know much about haunted houses in general, but scaring people sounded like they were doing something right.

“Something about it feels off,” Magnus frowned, absently picking an olive off his slice of pizza and popping it into his mouth. Alec tried not to stare. “An effect like that doesn’t match the rest of the house. The stuff we’re doing is pretty basic. A fun scare, but nothing to write home about.”

“Maybe they could only afford it in one room,” Clary suggested. “And that’s why they’re using free volunteers and rubber props in the rest of the house.”

”Maybe,” Magnus agreed, but he still didn’t look convinced.

——

Arguments over what exactly was in the last room of the house weren’t the only thing riling up social media. Rumors of guests disappearing between the entrance and the exit soon followed.

“It’s all marketing,” Lilith said breezily, when confronted about the rumors the next weekend. “The cops would shut us down if anyone _actually_ disappeared. And we wouldn’t have people lining up for three hours to get in,” she added with one of her unnervingly red smiles. Alec couldn’t put his finger on what bothered him so much about it. Isabelle wore red lipstick all the time, but it never looked like _that_.

“I remember one of the guys they’re saying disappeared last night,” Magnus muttered to Alec, his dark eyes troubled. “He didn’t seem like a plant.”

Simon’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket. He glanced down and put it away without unlocking it.

”Heidi again?” Clary asked. “His stalker,” she clarified for the rest of them.

“I don’t know how to get her to go away,” Simon sighed. “She says she’s coming to _Pandemonium_ tonight.”

Jace offered some unhelpful suggestions for Simon, but before they could talk farther, the announcement letting them know the doors were opening and guests were coming through interrupted them, and they got into position.

Heidi did indeed come through the house, making a rather embarrassing scene of cursing out Clary and offering to rescue Simon from her evil clutches as she went through their room, until Jace finally chased her into the next one.

“That’s weird,” Simon said after the last group of the night had gone through and the all clear announcement had sounded. “I thought my phone would be blowing up after Heidi got out, but there’s nothing.”

”Seeing you get mutilated must have been a massive turn off,” Jace said sagely.

Simon shook his head. “What if people actually _are_ disappearing from the house?” 

“It would have to be in room thirteen,” Magnus said. “We’re the last ones before the end, and we know she came this far. So did at least one of the others who disappeared.”

”Let me call her first,” Simon said. “Just to make sure we aren’t getting wound up over nothing.”

Simon tapped his foot impatiently as the phone rang and rang, but there was no answer. With the rest of the house silent, Alec thought he could hear the faint ringing of a phone coming from the next room. 

Everyone shared an unsettled look. So it wasn’t Alec’s imagination then.

”She probably just got scared and dropped it,” Jace suggested, but he sounded less sure of himself.

“We have to go check,” Simon insisted.

”He feels responsible for her,” Clary murmured to the others. “He wants her to leave him alone, but he also thinks it would be his fault if something happened to her, which is why he won’t just tell her to buzz off.”

“We’ll just go get her phone. I bet we’ll find her waiting outside to drape herself over Simon when we come out,” Jace said, twirling his prop knife in his fingers and walking through the gap between their room and the next.

His muffled scream had them all running after him.

The smell of sulfur hit Alec hard. Their room had been dim, but this one was even darker. Alec looked around frantically for Jace, but he could barely see anything. He took another step forward and something long and slimy brushed his cheek. 

He startled and looked up into the face of something impossibly giant, long tentacles surrounding a gaping red mouth full of sharp teeth. Terror washed through him, rooting him to the spot, too scared to even scream.

He heard a startled yelp beside him, and Magnus was being jerked forward by the wrist, which was enough to unfreeze him from his own terror. Alec grabbed hold of Magnus, tugging him back and wrenching the tentacle away before it could get a firm enough grip on him.

Magnus sagged against Alec’s chest for a moment as Alec held him up. He could feel how Magnus was shuddering with fear and revulsion.

Alec finally spotted Jace stabbing another tentacle around his waist with the dull knife still in his hand. Apparently with enough force, the point was still sharp enough because the thing let go with a hiss, and Jace stumbled away.

Clary grabbed his arm, and they all sprinted for the door, slamming the metal door separating the rooms behind them.

Something thudded against it with a heavy, wet squelch, an angry hiss, and then silence.

“That wasn’t a fake monster,” Alec said. His voice sounded hollow with shock, even to his own ears.

“Are you all right?” Magnus asked. He cupped Alec’s unhurt cheek and tilted his face so he could see the side the monster had touched, ignoring the welts on his own wrist from where the thing had grabbed him. ”You saved my life,” he murmured, like he was surprised anyone would do that for him.

Alec’s cheek burned like he had been splashed with acid, but he was otherwise fine. He wasn’t the one the monster had grabbed.

Jace’s shirt had dissolved at his waist, Simon was missing a pants leg below the knee, and Clary was rubbing her head like she had been hit.

There were no arguments from anyone. They all knew what they had seen couldn’t be faked. The standard haunted house trappings were all to funnel people straight into some kind of monster’s lair, where it could pick off the occasional guest, and the rumors would only drive more people to what everyone was calling the scariest haunted house in the state. Alec felt sick, knowing they had all been a part of it.

“Can it get through?” Clary whispered, eyes locked on the door.

”I don’t think so,” Magnus said. He pointed at the pentagrams etched into the metal. His fingers looked singed. “I think this keeps it in its room.”

“We can’t just leave it like this,” Alec said. “It’s going to kill more people.”

“Will fire kill it?” Simon asked. He was pale and still shaking a little. His glasses had disappeared somewhere. “I have a gas can in my car.”

“I don’t know, but I think it’s our only option,” Magnus said. “A prop knife may have startled it,” he nodded to Jace, “But it won’t be enough to kill it.”

They crept out through the house backwards to make sure it was completely empty. The rest of the rooms were similar to theirs, but with differently themed rubber props. The entire haunted house looked shoddy and flimsy after what they had just seen.

Luckily there were no stragglers. Magnus had said before how strange it was that friend groups had been kept together, like they were discouraging the volunteers to mingle with each other and chat about the house.

The only car left in the parking lot was Simon’s van. Had Lilith and the other full time staff already left too?

Alec’s heart pounded as they got the gas can out of Simon’s van, and got to work dumping it around the end of the haunted house, where the monster was contained. He was sure one of them would pop out any second to stop them.

“Do you really think this will work?” Alec asked, turning to Magnus. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. Alec was supposed to be battling his internal demons and working up the nerve to ask Magnus out for coffee, not fighting a literal monster that was probably going to kill them all.

Magnus reached for Alec’s hand, lacing their fingers together as he pulled a lighter out of his pocket.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Magnus said, the beautiful lines of his face set with determination.

Magnus threw the lighter.

Alec held on.


End file.
